


Dreaming into Being

by Katharos



Category: Loveless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katharos/pseuds/Katharos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>memory and identity are such complex things. Who could say where one ends and the other begins?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreaming into Being

Ritsuka can't remember three years of his life.

They tell him that during those three years, he could remember nothing. Sometimes he wonders who is more fortunate - the Ritsuka who had to create his own life while trailing tendrils of another's, or the Ritsuka returned to a life that another had lived for three years.

They moved away from wherever they had lived then, to allow him a fresh start his mother told him, smiling. He wonders if that other Ritsuka had friends who worried after him, and resented the stranger who had taken his place.

He remembers being himself, remembers his life and how he lived it, but it is a costume that doesn't quite fit, too tight in places and too loose in others, like the clothes his mother has kept.

His mother makes all the dishes he knows are his favourite foods, and occasionally ones he knows he hates. He knows all this, but somehow he also knows that he must never tell her that he actually quite likes this food or that, or that he has lost his taste for this.

When she draws him to her he goes limp under her hands even as a tense, resigned wariness coils through him. But he knows he must return the embrace, although he can't remember why the start of fearful suspicion in his mother's eyes is something to fear.

When he sleeps he always curls up on his side, eyes trained upon a small patch of mattress in the curve of his body, whereas he remembers always sleeping on his back.

In the dark of the night he thinks of that other Ritsuka, the one who lived for three years.

He feels ghostly arms about him in the night, a body pressed along his back, another head nestled close to his, and listens to the whispering voice that rises from somewhere within him during the day. But he never turns his head to see, never dares to meet this other Ritsuka-self's eyes. In the darkness thoughts that daylight forbids come easier.

Does that Ritsuka of three years of life whisper subtle knowings into the heart of the first Ritsuka? Or is it the first Ritsuka who whispers details of a life into the mind of the three-year Ritsuka, who has lost his memories of the mind, but whose essential self remains?

Is he a boy dreaming he is a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is a man?

He dreams of long blond hair and a deep voice that says things that make him feel cold inside, and although the words slip away, the yearning stays with him when he wakes.

An upper classman shoves him up against a wall and kisses him. The kiss is brutal, crude and inexperienced, all slobbering lips and huge, awkward tongue and he knows this is true, even though he can remember no other kiss to compare it to. He informs his senpai of this opinion, in exacting detail, and watches the older boy's face darken with rage.

He barely manages to duck the punch thrown at his face, and the other boy sneers and grabs one of his ears and it _hurts,_ the delicate tissue crushed as easily by that huge hand as a butterfly would have been.

It hurts more than he can remember ever hurting, but he finds he can focus past the pain, a small, hard cold knot at the bottom of his heart whispering, _this is nothing._

In the end, he has company on the ride to the hospital. The teachers murmur among themselves and cast doubtful looks in his direction, but the nature of his injuries bear mute witness to the order of events.

He sits quietly, perched on the edge of the hospital chair as the nurse fusses around his ear. She tells him apologetically that it will probably heal probably crooked. He makes a small noise of acknowledgment and otherwise ignores her flittering, staring down at his hands. He'd hurt that older boy with them in turn, and past the vague sense of distant, obligated horror he feels satisfaction at the thought. Satisfaction that he had paid him back? Somehow the feeling's weight seemed more significant.

It had been simple, clean. The older boy had hurt him, and he'd hurt him back.

Defending himself.

He doesn't understand the thrill of vengeful, self-justification that thought brings him, nor the wistfulness that accompanies it.

His mother watches him warily when she picks him up from the hospital, and he makes sure to ask for oyakadon omburi for tea.

When the dressings finally come off, his ear is indeed deformed. He puts up with the looks and whispers it brings, keeping the memory of the scandal fresh. Like the pain, he feels he has dealt with worse than this before.

And then one day he walks across the schoolyard after the last bell has rung, and the whispers aren't of him. The clusters of scattered cliques lean into each other with many darting glances towards the gate, and whisper disapproval, uncertainty, fearful fascination to each other.

An adult leans against the wall by the school gate, hair pale gold under the sunlight, a thin tendril of smoke winding upwards from his hand. The shock runs through him, like a lungful of freezing air on an icy winter's morning, and then he is running.

Memories are not needed for this knowing.

Ritsuka skids to a halt next to him, glowers up at him, reaches up and grabs the cigarette from him. "I told you to stop taking those!"

The adult stares down at him, empty hand still raised, a strange expression in his eyes.

Ritsuka stares up at him, tensing as fear slowly winds through him – that the knowing has failed him, that he is wrong, that he has made a fool of himself in front of a perfect stranger and he's still alone…

And then the adult smiles; carefully, deeply, and reaches out to brush a hand across his cheek. "Yes," Soubi murmurs. "You did."


End file.
